PAID YOUR BARCLAYCARD BILL?

If not I am sure I can help. To day we went to Canary Wharf which is an extraordinary place in its own right to welcome a team from Barclaycard who had bicycled a leg of their JOGLE from Northampton. They have been fantastic in supporting the charity as relays of riders make the old tradtional route. Their aim was to raise £50k but they have already exceeded that pretty comfortably; altough one rider was far from comfortable!! The rider on my right is Ed Carrell who served in the 17/21 Lancers a few years back. The whole of the Barclaycard executive team turned as did ours. A great show of enthusiasm.

GOODBYE SERGEANT MAJOR

Met up with the Garrison Sgt Major yesterday and we had a good chin wag on what makes a soldier tick.  He is a great supporter of the charity and helps whenever he can; he was wearing the tie.  This amusing snap is of him at Terminal One where there are hundreds of photos of him,  they now have the real live man.

RAINY MEETINGS

It was a full day of meetings yesterday and a dickens of a lot of rain!!  So going from one meting to the next, what do I do?  Leave the umbrella behind!!  The progress on British Military Tournament http://www.britishmilitarytournament.com/ is good and we are set for a busy September in promoting the event.  Its going to be fantastic and its something not to miss.

Then onto another meeting at Regents Park Barracks where I left the dreaded umbrella.  Then to Black Rock our investment managers to be briefed on new strategy.  All very interesting.  Its a worrying time and good to know we are well looked after by them.  

GUESS THE AGE

Here is Alison Miller who is celebrating her birthday after work. Alison with her normal happy smile keeps in touch with our corporates who are kind and generous enough to support us. She does a great job and we are lucky to have her experience and expertise.

LOOK NO HANDS!

Well its time to get under way in the good old blog again.  Have had a bit of a tussle with Mr Stitch who thought he was still doing the blog, but I have now taken the reins off him! This little snap shows Tommy Walsh of Ground Force placing his mark on the Community Centre which has been given a boost by the charity by using the "The Homes for Heroes" money raised thanks to Media 10 from the Ideal Home shows.  It was good to see the work being done in the isolated base at South Cerney. Also in the picture is Anna Kimber the CO of 29 Regiment RLC  and Levi Ashley the Unit Welfare Officer who with his staff has got all this organised. Tommy was great and gave several  interviews and as well as talking about our work here rased the issue that soldiers and their at South Cerney have no bus service into Cirencester , the nearest town.  Ridiculous for those families stuck there without a car.

Barclaycard JOGLE Team

4 enthusiastic members of the Barclaycard JOGLE team set of from sunny Edinburgh castle on Friday morning, the team negoitiated hundreds of tourists visiting the citys festivak to start the long cycle from Edinburgh to Newcastle. Here is a picture of the team

Mick Ruston – route leader
Jo Ruston – Micks wife, keeping it in the family! Jo is driving the support van with all the provisions!!
Bob Ruston
Chris Godfrey
Jon Tweddle

Great news the team have already passed their fundraising target of £50K, keep going guys and girls!!

Barclays/Barclaycard GPA JOGLE/

It seems to be all about saddles of late but the intrepid Barclaycard Global Payment Acceptance team are getting onto saddles of a different kind!

The team set off from John O'Groats in the wee hours of Tuesday morning and Mick Ruston and his team were clearly in good spirits, perfectly kitted out and raring to go! The team have covered over 400 miles to reach Newcastle at the end of today to hand over 'Jensen Baton' to Chris Firth who is in charge of the next leg.

The team took a bit of a detour to Edinburgh Castle this morning to visit our very own Roy Robertson, Director ABF The Soldiers' Charity, Scotland who gave them a warm welcome before they pedaled off again.

The Barclaycard team as a whole is raising funds to support Individual Recovery Plans under the Army Recovery Capability and are just a few pounds short of their £50,000 fundraising target which is tremendous.

Good luck to the team as they wind their way down the country and thank you for your fantastic support.